A group of public relations students from Loyola University recently won the university’s eighth national Bateman Competition title for their anti-bullying “Step Up, Reach Out!” campaign to “Geaux K.I.N.D.” in local New Orleans schools.

The group, including Dwayne Fontenette, Haley Humiston, Charlie LaRock, Leah Whitlock, and Vannia Zelaya, had the challenge of informing children ages 10-19 about the importance of addressing and eradicating bullying.

According to the National Bullying Prevention Center, one in three school aged children is bullied each year and only 36 percent of those children report it. The campaign set out to challenge this statistic with their “Geaux K.I.N.D.” initiative, where each letter stands for a step against bullying: Keep others included; inform an adult when you see bullying; never bully others; and decide to be more than a bystander.

The “Step Up, Reach Out” program hosted 22 workshops and programs in six schools along with an anti-bullying summit in February at Loyola University. At the beginning of the workshops, the group asked students how many of them knew someone who was in jail for committing a violent crime. When virtually every hand in the classroom shot up, it became clear that the “Step Up, Reach Out!” program could be used to address the issue of crime and violence at its roots.

“Bullying is an important topic nationally but is particularly relevant in New Orleans considering the violent crimes that start at younger ages in this city, which can be clearly traced back to an experience with bullying,” said Cathy Rogers, the group’s advisor and professor. Rogers has also been named by the Public Relations Association of Louisiana as the 2012 State Educator of the Year in public relations.

Through a combination of activities and information sessions, the workshops gave local students the knowledge and resources to be more than just a bystander and have the potential to save a life and to change it for the better. The group created a 23 page resource packet to aid in establishing an anti-bullying program in local organizations. 24 schools and nonprofits signed up to implement the program in their curriculums.

“Many students approached our workshop with a mentality of retaliation or the idea that seeing someone else being bullied was not their concern. By the end of our program, the students were creating their own conversations about our Steps of K.I.N.D.ness and understood the importance of being more than a bystander,” said Haley Humiston. “Several students at our Step Up To Bullying Summit designed campaigns for their high schools and have already started to put their campaigns in action”

This experience also prepared the Loyola group for possible future careers in public relations by teaching them to administer surveys, create focus groups and conduct interviews, and then to address those problems effectively. Once they actually implemented their campaign, the group wrote a booklet which was then submitted to the Bateman Case Study Competition of the Public Relations Student Society of America. The Loyola group’s “Step Up, Reach Out!” campaign was chosen as the winner among the 68 entries from colleges and universities nationwide, making it their eighth national title.

In the closing line of his presentation to the Bateman Competition, Dwayne Fontenette said, “The mission of being more than a bullying bystander now rests in the hands of the students, parents and educators of New Orleans. We've created ambassadors of change who will creatively craft their own bullying prevention plans, use our resources to promote an anti-hazing culture, receive grants from the Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays to implement their campaigns and practice the Steps of K.I.N.D.ness. The people we have reached with our messages will change lives."